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EPA GIVES HALF MILLION GRANT TO HELP REVITALIZE CITY OF LAS VEGAS

Release Date: 8/5/1999
Contact Information: Lois Grunwald, U.S. EPA, (415) 744-1588, Dawn Christensen, City of Las Vegas, (702) 229-6501

     Major redevelopment of downtown is planned  
 
     SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today awarded Las Vegas a $500,000 Brownfields Cleanup Revolving Loan Fund Grant to assist the city in the restoration of its downtown area.
   
     "This grant will help breathe new life and new opportunity into the city of Las Vegas," said Felicia Marcus, the EPA's regional administrator. "We are proud to work with a city committed to bringing business back into its heart and creating a more livable community."

     The grant will help leverage funds to clean up and restore the former Las Vegas Armory site and other abandoned or vacant properties in Las Vegas' downtown. Many areas of the downtown were abandoned years ago for other sites in the Las Vegas Valley.

     "To continue Las Vegas' emergence as a major metropolitan city, we must build a revitalized Downtown that is the true center of our City both economically and culturally," says Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman. "This grant will provide us with more opportunities to lure businesses back Downtown and create a district where the community wants to gather."

      With the EPA's grant the city will set up a revolving loan fund which will provide low-interest loans to businesses and others to turn brownfields back to productive use. The grant builds on a $200,000 EPA grant given to the city last year to conduct environmental studies at brownfields sites throughout the city. This grant will also be used to conduct outreach activities that will encourage community and business participation in the project.

     Brownfields are abandoned or under-used industrial or commercial areas where redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination. Property owners, lenders, investors and developers fear that involvement with these sites will make them liable for contamination they did not create.

      Through the EPA's efforts to clean up brownfields, over 2,000 jobs have been created and more than $1 billion has been leveraged from the private sector and other sources to redevelop the abandoned industrial sites.

      The grants also advance the Administration's "Livability Agenda," which gives states and local communities the tools they need to build healthy, livable and thriving communities. One of these tools is the Administration's proposed Better America Bonds. Through this program, tribal, state and local governments will be able to issue $9.5 billion in bonds to preserve open space, protect water quality or clean up brownfields. They will never pay a dime in interest and can wait 15 years before paying back the principal. Investors who buy the bonds receive tax credits equal to the interest they would have received on the bonds -- a total of $700 million.

     Information on the new brownfields pilot grant awards can be obtained from the the EPA's brownfields home page at: www.epa.gov/brownfields or the city of Las Vegas' home page at: http://www.ci.las-vegas.nv.us/brownfields_home.htm. Information on the proposed Better America Bonds can be obtained at: www.epa.gov/bonds.